Posted 9:58 AM by Scoobie Davis

Joe Conason on Michael Kinsley
Kinsley's Downing Street Memo whitewash:

Consider Michael Kinsley, the Los Angeles Times editorial page editor and columnist, who recently derided the [Downing Street Memo's] importance. According to him, "you don't need a secret memo" to know that "the administration's decision to topple Saddam Hussein by force" had been reached by then. Anybody could tell that war was "inevitable," he wrote. "Just look at what was in the newspapers on July 23, 2002, and the day before," he wrote, citing an opinion column by Robert Scheer and a Times story about Pentagon war planning.

But let's also look at what Kinsley himself wrote on July 12, 2002, after those war plans were leaked. On the Post's Op-Ed page, he suggested that despite all the logistical planning and bellicose rhetoric, "Bush may be bluffing ... Or he may be lying, and the leak may be part of an official strategy of threatening all-out war in the hope of avoiding it, by encouraging a coup or persuading Hussein to take early retirement or in some other way getting him gone without a massive invasion."

So Kinsley himself wasn't quite certain whether Bush had decided on war, yet now he says we all knew.

Conason also discussed Kinsley and the Downing Street Memo yesterday on The Al Franken Show--which is another reason to listen to Air America Radio.